Category: Books

The joy of the jump

“At some point you just jump off the cliff and you do the thing, and the thing is going to be good if it comes from inside of you.” — Ron Collins

“The act of being a writer, the point of being a writer, is to find joy in your life and to bring that out of you.” — also Ron Collins

I have backed Ron Collins’ Kickstarter, which will give me On Becoming (And Becoming Again) A Writer and two other books, and these quotes from his promotional video have already been helpful.

The first quote is a variation on one of my favorite Ray Bradbury quotes, “Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.”

There is a fun and a special kind of joy in writing, and I need to get back in touch with that reality/truth.

It’s the seeing a cute or clever turn of phrase and being delighted that it came from somewhere inside you — it’s the scene spilling onto the page from a chamber of delight you didn’t know you possessed — I used the word delight twice because it is appropriate to the feeling. Good writing is a joy, a blessing and, well, a delight. I am grateful that among God’s gifts to me are this ability to turn phrases and smith words.

Collins has already helped me reach inside to find that joy again. I look forward to the book, and more, I look forward to what comes out after I reach in.

Music and multitasking

I put on my “CCM” (contemporary Christian music) playlist and am now torn — I want to do some reading, but it’s hard to concentrate on the book when I’m listening to the music.

Some might call it multitasking, but those are two tasks that are mutually exclusive to me. The words on the page demand my attention, and the music demands to be heard. I can do one or the other, but not both.

Oddly, I’m listening to the music while I write, and that is not a challenge. Perhaps they both involve the creative part of my soul, and the book taps another aspect that requires concentration of a different kind. I suppose the people who study these things could explain it to me.

It’s interesting how the songs fling me about. Here is “Get Together” by Randy Stonehill, and I’m in the 1980s happy to hear a CCM artist embracing the spirituality of a pop song from a decade and a half earlier. Now comes “The Lord’s Prayer” by Sister Janet Mead, and it’s the seventies and I’m tickled to see a God song reach the Top Ten but a little timid about sharing my faith.

The Shuffle feature always splits up “He is Exalted” and its prologue, “Release of the Spirit,” even though they belong together. I remember how thrilling it was to hear Twila Paris at the piano building up to the song, much like the classical opening to Amy Grant’s “Sing Your Praise to the Lord.”

And here’s “John the Revelator,” and I’m reliving the first time I heard Phil Keaggy’s magnificent album Crimson and Blue. Here’s a funky extended song with lots of flashy guitar. Most artists would be content to make this the centerpiece of the album’s climax, but Keaggy goes from this into “Doin’ Nothin’,” another extended track with lots of flashy guitar. For a believer with a rock and roll heart, the two songs back to back comprise an exhilarating 16-minute romp, followed by the mellow and worshipful cool-down of “Nothing But the Blood” to finish the album beautifully.

I will definitely need to silence the phone before I can hear John Piper’s words in my brain this morning. My, Keaggy laid down some mighty fine music.

W.B.’s Book Report: Don’t Waste Your Life

I think I bought Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper in part because of the bonus DVD, which is still tucked in an unopened sleeve in the back of the book. I have been tracking all of the books I’ve read since 1994, and although this book has been on my shelf since shortly after it was published in 2003, it does not show up in my “Books Read” file. (I only record books I have finished.)

The dog ear on Page 72 is evidence that I started to read it somewhere along the way and made it nearly halfway through, and something on that page resonated with me. I didn’t write anything on the page, so it could have been something under the heading on top of the page — “Pain and Pleasure As Ways to Make Much of Christ” — or further down — “How We Handle Loss Shows Us Who Our Treasure Is” — or even that section over on Page 73 — “Wasting Life by Running From Pain.”

Piper is a Minneapolis-based preacher and one of a handful of authors who find their way into my pastor friend’s sermons from time to time. The first time he mentioned Piper, I may have thought, “Hey, I think I have a book by that guy,” and after much rinsing and repeating, I finally reached up and pulled it down. Of course it has been worth the effort.

The dog ear is two-thirds of the way through Chapter 4 of 10, “Magnifying Christ Through Pain and Death,” which reaches into Paul’s letters to make the point that how we die defines us as much as how we live.

“The way we die reveals the worth of Christ in our hearts,” Piper writes. “Christ is magnified in my death when I am satisfied with him in my dying — when I experience death as gain because I gain him.”

I’ll always remember a story from the funeral of a friend’s 13-year-old son who was dying of cancer. They sat down with their pastor to break the news that there was nothing more the doctors could do; he would be gone in a few days. The young man flashed a huge grin and teased the clergyman, “I’m going to meet Jesus before you do!”

I am in no hurry to die by any means, but when the time comes I hope I will face it by pointing people to Christ. Of course, every big change carries a little fear of the unknown, and death is the biggest change since we emerged from the womb, but I also trust God. As the plaque on my kitchen wall says, “I trust the next chapter because I know the author.”